Friday July 7, 2023 | LANGFORD, BC [Updated July 8, 2023]
Sociological Tech Analysis by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Full disclosure, Island Social Trends is a ‘Twitter Blue’ customer (we pay for the blue verification checkmark). But even so, alas, where is the Twitter we all once loved?
It used to be that a popular Tweet would soar for thousands of miles around the globe in seconds and garner a range of responses. Now it’s tough to get even a whiff of interest on an important or interesting Tweet.
We fully respect the need for any business to make money. Every business has to pay the bills and also make a profit, so that operations can continue to grow. But since Elon Musk took over Twitter, things have been getting messy, complicated and insufficient for the users (including those who pay).
The features for paying users are fantastic … including the ability to edit a Tweet for up to one hour after posting. But the clunkyness of how Tweets reach viewers (if they even do in any reliable fashion) has taken the fresh air out of what was once “the public town square” that Musk once described Twitter as.
Twitter has changed:
The overall Twitter experience has changed, and not for the better. Twitter now prioritizes Tweets in a category they call ‘For You’ (their choices) over the ones the user has signed up to follow. Even for Twitter Blue users, together with the present limits on Tweet-views per day, the experience seems to be crumbling fast.
Several months ago lots of Twitter fans were dismayed at the so-called opening-up of ‘free speech’ (it was always there), understandably that people with what might be called politically incorrect views were getting their points out there. People wanted alternatives. A humble replica of Twitter called Spoutible emerged in February of this year; it’s a clean safe online environment, but already a few months later no one is talking about it.
In comes Meta (aka Mark Zuckerberg / Facebook) this week with a direct-on hit against Twitter. The newly launched Threads offers easy sign-up (including use of the same handle as used on Instagram) and has already garnered millions of new users in just a matter of days. But are people forgetting the less honourable things that Meta does (like selling user data) and the missteps or misjudgements that it continues to make (such as investing in virtual reality that has been trumped by physical reality).
Why people loved Twitter:
People loved Twitter because it was truly an open space where one could post their message into a global bulletin board. Small players had a shot at instant wide reach. But more so, everyone could participate.
Twitter offered freedom of thought and a place to say it. Arguably, it supported positive results for individuals who might feel better just thinking their voice might count. And for businesses and governments — which have poured tons of money into ads in social media — the cost-effective reach has been a marketer’s dream.
Threads has grabbed the oxygen in the social media room this week But our prediction is that Twitter still has a chance to emerge victorious — maybe not so much for its own bottom line (Twitter has apparently never made any healthy level of profit) but as a gift to the human conversation that people around the world thirst for.
Footnote on the logos:
Twitter’s little blue bird logo was perhaps too cute for some but it helped maintain a light airiness to the idea of thoughts flying across the airspace and perhaps with some freshness or joy like a bird singing. In comes Meta with their Threads logo — a squiggle of lines that is actually uncomfortable.
It seems like it might be trying to combine the ‘@’ sign from reference to email or all things ‘e’, but it also resembles some Reiki symbols that impact people’s energy fields. Some IT pundits are saying the squiggle-logo plays on a Malayalam letter or symbol called Thra (similar first syllable as in Threads). It’s an uncomfortable image — messy and tangled.
Giving away your personal data:
And why have people forgotten the reckless disregard that Meta has shown for people’s personal data? Willingly jumping into Threads in a reactive move to express dissatisfaction with Twitter is like lemmings jumping off a cliff, each one following the next to their collective doom. Or, as one’s mother might say: ‘if your friends do something dangerous or crazy, does that mean you will too?’.
Twitter, for all its faults, has taken the proprietary route and seems to have protected user data. That’s safer for the users, and more respectful.
Sticking to Twitter:
For all the glamour and ease of ‘switching’ to Threads, and all the problems that Twitter has mostly created for itself, hopefully people will follow their sensibilities and recognize the pitfalls of big-money creating an overnight sensation that has less of a soul.
===== Reader feedback:
After posting this article, one of our regular followers has posted on Twitter that Musk made mistakes and Zuckerberg swooped in for the kill.
===== RELATED:
Twitter now prioritizing verified accounts (April 25, 2023)
Spoutible ready to launch against Twitter (January 31, 2023)
Suspending some journalist accounts puts Musk at odds with Twitter mission (December 16, 2022)
Twitter shutdown of Trump highlights increasing powers of social media (July 8, 2021)
===== ABOUT THE WRITER:
Mary P Brooke has writing insight-news since 2008. Her publication series has covered news of the day through broader socioeconomic and political insights in the west shore region as well as key sociopolitical and socioeconomic issues of today’s society, as published by Brookeline Publishing House Inc under these mastheads: MapleLine Magazine (2008-2010), Sooke Voice News (2011-2013), West Shore Voice News (2014-2020), and Island Social Trends (since 2020).
The Island Social Trends print edition (previously West Shore Voice News) launches later in July 2023, after a three-year hiatus during the pandemic years, while continuing here at IslandSocialTrends.ca. The print-bound copies of MapleLine Magazine, Sooke Voice News and West Shore Voice News are already part of the permanent collections at the Sooke Region Museum.
Ms Brooke now reports with the BC Legislative Press Gallery, as part of delivering regional news on Vancouver Island.
This year, Mary P Brooke has been nominated for the Jack Webster Foundation Shelley Fralic Award to recognize a professional female journalist whose journalism makes a contribution to the community.
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